2013-07-20 Sat/Sun - Dunwich Dynamo DD21

The green at Westleton would be the answer but in a N.I.M.B.Y. type way it's never going to happen.
Loving the ride reports keep 'em coming...
Give thanks,
Tim

Thought about doing the coach pickup back at the next village instead of at the beach? Sending a dozen coaches & lorries down singletrack with riders still coming and going + cars is pretty chaotic.

The beach car park has the space to arrange five coaches at a time, and for an extended queue of cyclists. Having the pickup at a different location may be a possibility, and the question had arisen before, but I don't think it would work very well, and I can see many being unhappy with such an arrangement. We should consider all possibilities, but my preference is for traffic management at the beach.

My first Dun Run. Decided to do it at the last minute after my weekend became free. I'm currently living in Haslemere, which is a 50 minute train journey from Waterloo. I got there at about 7:30, and began the roll over to London Fields. The closer I got, the more cyclists there were, and it was clear we were all going in the same direction. I wasn't meeting up with anyone as such, so I was fairly chatty with whoever was around me.
When we got to London Fields, I was struck by the number of people there - I hadn't really comprehended what 2,000 cyclists looked like. Anyway, I stood around chatting for a bit, with the fact that I was riding the bike from the famous scene at the beginning of Sunday in Hell being the main conversation starter. I rode out past the pub in a biggish group at around 8:15, assuming that someone had a map. After a lot of fiddling around including riding through a churchyard and a towpath, I think we got to the main route. I had by this point lost my printed out list of villages, looking down at the speedo showed 4 miles completed.
I was feeling fairly fresh and the bike was working well, despite my rear tub being unglued and on completely wonky, so I was keeping up a good speed on the road out North, passing cyclists where safe. Rode past a guy in sharkpits pumping out some tunes, which put a smile on my face. Also got chatting to someone who referred to me as 'Monsieur Tour de France' because of my bike. A load of Dulwich Paragon riders came past. I didn't like the sneer they gave me so I thought I'd ride with them for a bit. It's an adolescent thing I suppose, proving that I could be as quick as them. I was to regret this later, although the average speed does look good on Strava.
Waving to people standing by the side of the road was a highlight of this otherwise dull trundle through the suburbs. As the sun went down the lights came on and we all realised that we were in for a long one. About 25 miles in I got distracted while having a drink of water, and was unable to stop when the group in front of me slowed. I knew that I could either ride into them and take someone else down or abandon into the hedge, which I did. Anyway, I picked myself up and poured some water over my leg and hands to get rid of the gravelly stuff, and it was fine.
So we continued until Sible Hedingham, by means of the cyclocross interlude. The old girl had developed some creaks so I got out the Allen keys and made some of them go away. I had a loose chainring bolt that I couldn't do much about. A cup of tea and shortbread was very welcome, as was some of the jelly cubes that I had packed in my saddlebag on the grounds that they have the highest calorie to volume ratio of any foodstuff available on the open market.
After a quick check of the tyres etc I was off. One of my few memories from the next 50 miles is seeing my own silhouette on the trees in front of me from someone's very powerful light behind me while careering down a hill. Took a wrong turn somewhere around Needham Market, which was 2 or 3 unwelcome extra miles. The sign to Dunwich was duly celebrated, and I was very glad to arrive on the beach just after 5.
The plan had been to sleep and get the train from Darsham, but visions of waiting on the platform all day allowed me to summon the energy to begin the slow ride to Ipswich. About 5 miles into that journey, a group of roadies very kindly offered me their wheel, and we got into TT mode, averaging 20mph down the A12. After missing the 8:09, we got ourselves and the bikes safely onto the 8:46, Dunwich adventure completed.

Massive csb. Sorry all, got carried away.

Il be out on this - Running a stop motion out the back so feel free to wave :)

How did the stop motion turn out?

Is that blue line people on the Dun Run perchance?

http://app.strava.com/saturday-heatmap#0|0|6|53.13445|-1.43659

Boo!

Nice find, gives a good indication of the stretch of the peloton throughout the night.

Ah. I get it, you have to slide the time about at the top. Took me ages. Like it.

awesome

the fact that I was riding the bike from the famous scene at the beginning of Sunday in Hell being the main conversation starter.

Que?!

Is that blue line people on the Dun Run perchance?

http://app.strava.com/saturday-heatmap#0|0|6|53.13445|-1.43659

Yes, as mentioned on the 'What's This?' page:

http://engineering.strava.com/saturday-heatmap/

That's pretty cool

^ ah I was linked directly to the map. Good to see they thought their own data was pants :/

Boo!

Que?!

not the actual one obvs. but one with the same paint and stickers!

Cool...what bike? The one the guy cleans with a paintbrush?!

Sunday In Hell intro - YouTube

gets me every time

this:

I haz one of dem, init.

They're nice, aren't they. Mine is a little later than that one, I think about '79. Also it's one of the Mexican ones, most of which have disintegrated at the bb shell by now...

I made a video of this ride - edited, not like the raw go pro stuff you often get :-)

Look forward to DD 2015!

Dunwich Dynamo 2012 - YouTube

Nice work!

2012 was magic.